The Hess Cross

by James Thayer

  Crown turned to the hoarse drone of an approaching navy jeep. It, too, had a mounted automatic weapon on its flank. It parked near the van, and the SP swung the barrel toward the trees. Crown felt as if he had captured his chess opponent's queen. The men inside the woods were trapped. They would be defeated by the only strategy they understood—hard blows with heavy weaponry.

  For an instant Crown thought the dark object flying at him was a bat. He ducked, and it bounced off the car. A Luger. From inside the woods came an accentless voice: "We surrender. We're coming out."

  Sullivan yelled from the van, "The little one's got a submachine gun, Crown."

  That and a lot of gall if they believe I'll buy the surrender story, Crown thought. Men this ferocious don't surrender so easily.

  A Schmeisser tumbled through the air and landed in the dirt at Crown's feet. Again from the woods: "There's two of us. One's injured. I'll be helping him out."

  Leaves rustled directly in front of Crown. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sullivan's shotgun raise as he zeroed in on the sound.

  "Sullivan," Crown yelled, "they come out of there alive. Lower your shotgun."

  "To hell with you, Crown. You know what I said about prisoners."

  With a menace Crown believed him incapable of, Smithson growled, "They die, you die." The fat agent raised his pistol to cover Sullivan.

  Willi Lange staggered from the woods onto the dirt road. He was holding Erich von Stihl around the waist. Blood poured from a gash on the colonel's head. His eyes were vacant, and he stumbled, almost bringing the slight Lange to his knees with the weight.

  "We surrender," Lange yelled again. He raised one hand above his head. He was quickly surrounded by the jeep's shore patrolmen, who violently searched him and von Stihl, oblivious of the colonel's wound. They were shoved against the car. The colonel slumped to the ground. Lange thrust both his hands above his head.

  These can't be stormtroopers, Crown thought. They were bums. The little one, the one who was supposed to be so dangerous with a submachine gun, was the dregs of the earth. His clothes were worn and filthy. He was unshaven, and twigs and bits of leaves clung to his tousled hair. The blond with blood running down his face was no cleaner. His pants had been torn at the knee. One shoe was missing. The blond groaned and sputtered blood as it seeped into his mouth. Crown was disappointed. He had unrealistically been expecting men with polished jackboots and Nazi regalia pinned on their uniforms, not hobos.

  "Well," Everette Smithson said as he pushed his gun into his pants, "we got them alive. Where should we put them?"

  "It doesn't matter. Maybe the navy has a stockade." Crown looked at Sullivan, who was fuming behind the steering wheel of his squad car. "We can't let Sullivan or any other cops have them if we want to interrogate them, though."

  Smithson looked around to make sure they were out of hearing range of the others. "Why not hold them at the EDC house? We've got another bedroom there that's as secure as the one Hess is in. Plus, we've got the best interrogator in the world there. Professor Ludendorf. If he can't find out why these guys are here, no one can."

  It made sense. If the saboteurs were somehow connected with Hess's presence in Chicago, as the Priest suspected, then the sooner Ludendorf found out their motive, the safer Hess would be. Plus, the EDC house was guarded so heavily that, even if their mission was to kill Hess, there would be no way for them to reach the deputy führer, even though he was two bedrooms away.

  "All right," Crown said.

  "I'll talk to the base commander. He'll turn them over to us."

  Crown nodded. He already had a mental list of questions he wanted Professor Ludendorf to ask the saboteurs. Why did they go to so much trouble to get to a training center? How did they get into the country? Why didn't they bring their own explosives with them, rather than risk hijacking a truck? Above all, how are these Germans connected with Rudolf Hess?

  XVI

  THE PHONE BOOTH WAS CRAMPED, and like most men, John Crown couldn't sit comfortably. It was the telephone company's way of keeping conversations short. His knee banged against the folding door, and he muttered an expletive summarizing his feelings for the phone company.

  "Pardon me?" Richard Sackville-West said from Washington, D.C.

  "Nothing. I'm trying to close the door here."

  "How're you holding up under the long gun?"

  "Fine. I use a bathroom every thirty minutes, but other than that, just fine."

  "You've been keeping busy. That should help," Sackville-West suggested.

  "I guess it has. I hardly thought about it when we were trailing those stormtroopers. I was always surrounded by cops, so I wasn't an easy target. But now I'm back to the routine of taking Hess to these interrogation sessions and escorting Heather around at night."

  "That doesn't sound that bad, particularly the evenings with your British girlfriend." The Priest laughed softly.

  "Sure. Knowing that any minute some pro is going to launch a bullet at me is a lot of fun."

  "When are you going to set it up?"

  "Later today. It'll be the first time since they began looking for me that I won't be surrounded by cops or passersby. Heather knows our plans, so the assassin does, too. He'll strike this afternoon."

  "You'll be ready?" A redundant question. Sackville-West could almost hear his agent's chilly smile over the phone.

  "I'll be ready."

  "What about the German stormtroopers you caught?"

  "None of that makes any sense," Crown replied. "First, look at their caliber. I first heard about Erich von Stihl in 1939 when our intelligence pegged him as second-in-command of the German force that dressed in Polish Army uniforms and then assaulted the German radio station, giving Hitler an excuse to invade Poland."

  "It was callous, but well executed," Sackville-West said.

  " 'Callous,' for Christ's sake. 'Murder' is a better word."

  "A little jumpy, aren't you?"

  Without answering, Crown looked through the long panes of glass in the booth door to the uniformed guard leaning against the Metallurgical Lab's hallway wall. He wore sergeant's stripes and a crew cut. Crown turned away from him and said, "We also know he led the first assault on the Athens airport that wiped out the RAF in Greece."

  "That we do."

  "His unit didn't suffer a single casualty in the raid. That's all I know about him."

  "He also spent several months training stormtroopers for Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of England, which Hitler abandoned in October 1940," Sackville-West added.

  "So von Stihl is a legend that all young German stormtroopers emulate. His reputation is deserved. Apparently he's a brilliant special-task operative." Crown paused to look at the booth ceiling for a vent. There was none. It was stifling with the door closed. Rivulets of sweat were running down his back. "Did you have anything on the Wehrmacht corporal, Willi Lange?"

  "No. Neither do the British."

  "Well, I figure he's also very talented. Small weapons, especially the submachine gun," Crown said. "He did a couple unbelievable and very deadly stunts with his Schmeisser before we caught him."

  "What about the one who was killed?"

  "We don't know his name yet. From the tattoo under his arm, he's an SS member. He was huge, six-feet-five, two hundred and forty pounds. Our doctor says he was in remarkable physical shape. All his muscles were striated. No cavities in his teeth. He had a bad scar under his right ear, and, interestingly, calluses on his knuckles."

  "Like a bare-knuckle boxer."

  "Who knows, but you can be sure he was also a specialist, probably something physical, like silent killing. So we have a team of highly talented German commandos. Another puzzling fact is that they went to a lot of trouble to get here. We know this because they left no trace of their travels. It's difficult and expensive for three people to enter this country and cross a thousand miles of it invisibly. Then, after going to all the effort to move secretly, when they got to Chicago they hijacked
the dynamite truck, which splashed them all over the front pages. I can't figure out why they went to so much trouble to remain invisible, then do something so bloody it was guaranteed to make the newspapers across the country. It doesn't make sense."

  "And there's the question of the explosives."

  "Right. There're a lot easier ways to steal dynamite than the way they did it. They could've broken into a warehouse or into the powder company's storage buildings. Or they could have brought it into the country with them. So why did they hijack the truck? It wasn't necessary."

  "The big question," Sackville-West said, and Crown could hear him puffing on his pipe as he lit it, "is, why did they hit the navy training center?"

  "I've no idea. Neither does Smithson, and he knows all about that base. Three bombs were used, one on an antiaircraft trainer, one on a weather station, and one on an amphibious-craft garage. The third bomb also blew down the security shack. They were destroyed, all right, but why? I can't imagine buildings with less strategic importance. So we have three top commandos going to great lengths to destroy worthless targets."

  "Perhaps their intelligence concerning the buildings was wrong."

  "That's unlikely. Almost anyone could find out what those buildings were, much less the German Abwehr. Hell, they probably have the whole base plotted to the last inch. But even if the commandos' information was wrong, the buildings spoke for themselves. What they were should have been obvious. They were blown up anyway. Then, there's one last question, the problem of the missing dynamite."

  "What?" Crown had caught Sackville-West off guard. The Priest's voice was tinny and distant as he said, "What about the dynamite?"

  "They stole three hundred and twenty pounds of it. Yet, our expert says only about half that was used at the navy station. We haven't found the remaining crate of explosives."

  There was silence from Washington.

  "Where do you think it is?" the Priest finally asked in a voice so dry it blended with the long-distance static.

  "The Chicago police are looking for it."

  "Wonderful."

  "Maybe the Germans simply stole too much of it and then found they needed only half what they stole."

  "In light of the caliber of the men involved, does that sound too likely?" Sackville-West asked, his voice no less irritated.

  "No. So they have a use for the rest of it."

  "Probably. Perhaps a long-fuse bomb already planted somewhere."

  "No," Crown answered. "It's easy to fuse a bomb up to twelve hours. Any longer is risky. I think there's someone we haven't caught yet. Maybe another commando."

  "Which brings us to your problem," Sackville-West said. "I still say those commandos are in Chicago because Hess is there. I don't know how they know, or why they've come. But it's just too coincidental that these bizarre events are occurring at the same time Hess is there."

  "And you think I'm under the long gun because Hess is here?"

  "Yes."

  "So Hess, the commandos, and my potential assassin are on a common mission?"

  "Not the same mission, necessarily, but they've got something to do with each other. That's the only explanation that makes sense."

  "I'm going to find out some answers this afternoon."

  "From the assassin?" Sackville-West asked.

  "As I said, he'll come. And he'll live just long enough to tell me a few things."

  "John, the odds against you increase drastically if you insist on that conversation."

  "Do you have any better ideas how to break this open?"

  "As long as it's you, not me, no. Are you going to need backup?"

  "No."

  "I have a hunch if Miguel Maura were alive, you'd want a backup man. Why not use Smithson?"

  "Well, despite my previous opinion of him, he handled himself well against that Chicago cop who was going to shotgun the Germans. But no, I can handle this alone."

  "In other words, you don't particularly want anyone to see your tormentor's fate." Sackville-West's laugh was brittle and cold.

  The guard outside the phone booth reached for his holster and unbuttoned the cover snap. Crown's pistol was out of his belt and pointed at the guard through the glass before Crown realized snapping the flap was the guard's nervous habit. The guard's eyebrows shot up, and he backed into the wall when he saw the gun's snout aimed at his stomach. Crown shook his head, and the guard raised his hand away from the holster. He stood frozen as Crown continued the conversation.

  "Getting back to the German commandos. We're pretty sure the Nazis want Hess dead because they're afraid he'll do exactly what he's doing this minute with Professor Fermi—talk his brains out. Perhaps the commandos came to get rid of Hess."

  "How did they know he was in Chicago?" the Priest asked.

  "No idea."

  "And if that were their purpose, why did they go to the trouble of the hijacking and the explosions?"

  "Maybe to get our attention," Crown said. "Perhaps they're halfway to their objective. We're keeping von Stihl and Lange at the EDC house only a few yards from Hess. Professor Ludendorf is questioning them. Von Stihl has a bad concussion from a bullet crease, and he's not very coherent."

  "From what I understand, they might just as well be a continent away."

  "That's right," Crown said, still pointing his pistol at the guard. "The house is guarded so heavily, nothing could happen. Plus, they're chained hand and foot to their beds. They've got a little room to move, but not enough to cause any trouble. They'll stay that way until Hess goes back to London."

  "When'll that be?"

  "Fermi has been talking to him for about an hour every morning. He's doing that right now down the hallway. Even with Professor Ludendorf and Peter Kohler's help, it's a slow process. Hess's mind fades in and out. Hess's information is interesting, but not exactly earth-shaking. Fermi is convinced Hess knows more, and that's why he doesn't object to talking to Hess, even though the time of his experiment is close."

  "When?"

  "He told me he was going to try it this afternoon. That's why he's so impatient and excited during the interview this morning. He keeps looking in the direction of the squash court as if he could see the pile through the walls."

  "If the experiment is successful, it'll be one of the greatest achievements in human history. I can't blame him for being excited," Sackville-West said.

  "No, neither can I. Well, I'll get back to the interview. This is the sixth time Fermi has questioned Hess. The strain on all of us is beginning to show. I'm glad Ludendorf and Kohler handle Hess so well. I wouldn't have the persistence."

  "One last thing, John." Crown knew the voice. The Priest saved the hard questions for last, and this was it. "I trust you have your plans regarding Heather McMillan worked out?"

  Crown couldn't answer. After several seconds, the Priest continued, "You know our policy. You have a little discretion, but not much. This matter won't ever be released to the press, so she won't get a trial." Sackville-West again paused for Crown's response. Again there was none, so he added, "I can send another operative to Chicago to relieve you of that responsibility, if you want."

  "No. No, that won't be necessary."

  Heather's time was coming. His actions were to be automatic. And terminal. It was standard procedure. Following the books.

  She had made massive inroads on his better sense. Crown had tried to insulate himself so his emotions wouldn't get the upper hand. As he sat sweating in the suffocating booth, he knew he had failed. The hard line between work and play had blurred. He could no longer think of Heather as a tool used to trap an assassin. Yet that's what she was. A disposable tool.

  She was tracing Crown. Heather was a shadow whose job was easy. She didn't have to wait in freezing Chicago sleet outside a building for hours while her mark was inside, or follow him through city traffic, or run up six flights of stairs while he rode an elevator. She was what the trade called a grace shadow, one who was in the good graces of the mark. She acco
mpanied him openly and constantly. All she had to do was to occasionally report to her employers, which Crown had seen her do three times in the past week.

  She was a traitor, and he was in love with her. Christ, what a spot. He had postponed coming to a resolution. He thought about her constantly, but had avoided the decision. The choice would soon be upon him. But there wasn't a choice. She was bought by Miguel Maura's killers. She was a paid informer, and she could have only one fate. As he sat in the tiny booth, Crown became so angry at his predicament that he unconsciously cocked the Smith and Wesson. The guard outside the phone booth went up on his tiptoes against the wall and raised his shaking hands even farther.

  "Does Fermi give any indication when he'll be done with Hess?" Sackville-West's voice snapped Crown's thoughts back to the booth.

  "No," Crown replied, and continued rapidly as if to compensate for the unknown amount of time he had been lost in his reverie. "The bomber crew is out at Midway, and they're ready to go on a few minutes' notice."

  "Good luck this afternoon, then."

  The telephone was heavy in Crown's hand as he lifted it to the hook. He felt as if he had spent thirty minutes in a sauna, and he slumped against the phone-booth wall, overwhelmed with fatigue and resignation. The effects of his long-gun vigil mingled with an immense sadness, and he was enervated. He wanted to walk away from the business, go back to Oregon and become a harbormaster. Leave Hess and Fermi and, most of all, leave Heather, leave her alive. . . . Without completing the thought, he pushed himself up and shoved open the booth door. He was surprised to find the guard backed up against the wall across from the booth with his hands in the air.

  "Something wrong?" Crown asked.

  "Jesus," the guard blurted without lowering his hands, "you've held a cocked pistol on me for ten minutes."

  Crown noticed his pistol for the first time since he had drawn it. He slipped it back into his pants and muttered an apology as he walked past the guard to the interview room.